


Tutor

by Fivellion



Category: Monsters Inc. (Movies)
Genre: Fluffy, I'm not cute, M/M, Studying, Two-Shot, how dare you, mid-Monsters University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23763508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fivellion/pseuds/Fivellion
Summary: Set during the college years. Mike needs to loosen up and Sulley just needs another beer. Slight AU: Humanoid monsters! Rated T for course language, alcohol, and mild adult situations. Mike/Sully
Relationships: James P. "Sulley" Sullivan & Mike Wazowski
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

"Mike?"

Mike jumped like he'd been stung, then recognized Sulley's distorted reflection in the silver surface of the scare games trophy. He turned, clearing his throat. "Yeah?"

"Um…" Sulley glanced at the trophy and grimaced, stuffing his oversized hands in his varsity jacket. "Watcha doin' back here?"

"Oh, you know…" Mike shrugged narrow shoulders, his gaze wandering to the portraits on the walls. The fiery, four-eyed Bill "the Bull" Quasi glared down at him in all his infamy. Mike shrugged again. The muted electronic beat leaked through the walls in the narrow hall and thrummed in the floorboards. "… What're you doing here?" Mike asked.

"Bathroom," Sulley said, a little too quickly. "Haven't found it yet. You wouldn't happen to know…?"

"I thought you'd been here before?"

"A few times, but it's a maze, and I was… fairly intoxicated on previous occasions." Sulley quirked a lazy smile, scratching absently at the blue fuzz on his broad jaw.

Mike's Adam's apple bobbed. "Right." He glanced at his roommate skeptically. "You drunk now?"

Sulley broke into a grin, flashing his monstrous canines. "More or less."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Sulley laughed. "I don't know, dude."

Mike pursed his lips. "You seem to be having a lot of fun, for someone who didn't want to come to this party."

"I loosened up. That's kind of what I do. You should try it sometime."

Mike scowled. "I'm loose. I mean-"

Sulley laughed. "You're pretty much the opposite of 'loose,' man."

" _I mean,"_ Mike stressed, "That I can have fun sometimes."

"I haven't seen you dance once tonight."

"I'm still having fun."

"You'd have more fun if this was a library."

"Shut up."

"At least have a beer. I've never seen you drink."

"Yeah, well… yeah."

"Yeah? You want a beer?"

Mike shrugged noncommittally, aware that Sulley would take that as a yes. Sulley grinned again, wrapped his meaty hand around Mike's pencil-thin wrist and dragged him out of the Scare Hall of Fame and through the pulsing crowd. At some point, he plucked a beer from a cooler, handed it back to Mike, and continued to lead him away from the throng. Mike found himself outside, on a balcony overlooking the lake. He shivered in the night air. Sulley sunk heavily into a cushioned loveseat and beckoned Mike over. The beer was sweating in Mike's hand.

"Your tail is in the way."

Sulley shrugged, eyes closed and head lulling back against the cushions, exposing his thick neck. "Sit on it," he replied. "I don't give a fuck. You're like a feather."

Mike bit his tongue and sat gingerly, nudging Sulley's shaggy tail out of the way. Sulley's general bigness was spilling into his personal space, but that happened a lot, now that he stopped to think about it. Sulley's tree-trunk arms were draped across the back of the smallish couch and his long legs were splayed. Mike forced himself not to make himself smaller. He adopted Sulley's posture, slouching into the cushion and stretching out his skinny frame, but this only reminded him of how woefully miniscule he was by comparison. Sulley was a mountain, and he knew it. He used his size to get what he wanted. Mike's only comfort was and had always been his brain.

Mike stared at the bottle in his lap for a few seconds before taking a swig, fighting a grimace at the taste. He could feel Sulley watching him.

"So, you're not much of a party animal, huh?"

Mike grimaced. "You're just now figuring that out."

"No. But hey, you could have surprised me."

Mike raised an eyebrow and took another drink. "You know…" he hesitated. "I thought you were still mad at me."

"Huh?"

"I thought you blamed me for getting you kicked out of the program."

Sulley stared at him, heavy-lidded. "I don't really do grudges. Too much work."

Mike hmphed. "Here I thought you'd realized it was because you never study."

Sulley tensed next to Mike and looked at him for a minute. Mike started to wonder if he was about to be punched in the face, but Sulley backed off. "If you weren't so darn cute, I'd smash that beer over your head."

Mike bristled. "Cute?! I'm not cute! Why would you say that?"

"Dude. What are you, like 4'7"? You're tiny."

"That doesn't mean I'm not scary!"

"Chill."

"You chill!"

Sulley laughed, slid the beer out of Mike's hands, briefly tangling their fingers, and he gulped half the bottle. He put the beer back in Mike's lap. "What's the next challenge?" he asked, changing the subject.

"You don't know? It's the teenager maze."

"Oh, right."

"We got this," Mike continued. "Training starts bright and early tomorrow."

Sulley groaned. "Why? We don't have classes. We have all day to-"

"Do you want to win or not?"

Sulley grunted. "I know how to scare, man."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know that. You're daddy's terrifying little monster. It's not like I don't know you're scary, ok? But there's a reason that we're here. Why do you think there's a whole program dedicated to scaring? Some people know better than you. You don't know everything, alright?" There was a long, uncomfortable silence. "If you need- I mean, if you want help- studying, I mean… I can tutor you."

Sulley snorted. "I don't think so."

"When we get back into the program, Mr. Knight will expect you to know the techniques and phobias. I've never seen you pick up a book that you weren't going to use to prop up a table leg." Mike looked up from his beer. "Sullivan?"

Sulley had his eyes closed and was breathing deep. "… I'll figure it out," he said eventually.

"Suit yourself. But you're still training tomorrow. The team is depending on you-"

"Alright! Shut up." Sulley's hand flopped heavily onto Mike's head and ruffled his green hair.

"Hey!" Mike protested, tugging at Sulley's sleeve.

Sulley's lips twitched. "Cute," he said.


	2. Chapter 2

"This is _so boring!"_

"Stop whining and listen!" Mike scowled. "I knew I would regret this."

"A kid is a kid, it doesn't matter where they live or what toothpaste they use! Who's not going to be afraid of this?" Sulley proceeded to snarl thunderously, claws and teeth bared.

Mike shushed him quickly. "You're gonna wake up the whole house! Anyway, maybe it doesn't matter to you, but it matters to Professor Knight."

"Pfff. Like you could work on an actual scare floor."

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. "Will you just pay attention? I'm not sitting here losing sleep just to argue with you about scare philosophy. Do you want the grades or not?"

Sulley stared him down, then sighed. "I want the grades."

"Ok! So." Mike turned away to open one of the text books that littered his bed. "Chapter 3 is all about phobias. There's a lot of vocabulary in this chapter, so you should probably take notes-"

"I don't need to."

Mike took a deep breath. "No, you don't _need_ to, but it's a good-" Mike trailed off as he felt Sulley's weight on the mattress shift and Sulley's warmth pressing in by his side. They weren't quite touching, but the little light bulb in their shared bedroom cast Sulley's shadow over Mike's shoulder and across the pages in his lap.

After a moment or two, Sulley said, "How do you pronounce that? Cawl-er-o-phobia?"

Mike remembered to breathe. "Coulrophobia. Fear of clowns…"

"What's a clown?"

"It's a human thing."

"Phonophobia."

"Fear of loud noises."

Mike heard Sulley chuckle throatily. "I can certainly work with that fear."

"Yeah, well… Some of the most common fears are arachnophobia, which is fear of spiders, and astraphobia, fear of thunder and lightning. What you want to do is play on the known fears of the child. Like, if they are afraid of thunderstorms, you make your roar more booming. If they're afraid of spiders, you make little noises that mimic the movement of small animals before jumping out. Let's look at some of the snarl techniques…"

Mike held very still while he lectured on scare tactics. Sulley radiated warmth. Mike tripped a little over his words when he felt Sulley sniff discretely at his hair. He spent a while after that wondering if he had imagined it. He was starting to get the feeling that Sulley wasn't actually reading along with him from the text.

"Do you get it?" Mike asked eventually. "Sullivan?"

"Hm?"

"Do you understand the difference between low growl and rumble?"

"Mm. Oh! Oh, yeah. Totally."

"What's the difference?"

"Low growl is… a low sort of… growl. And a rumble… explain it again?"

Mike sighed and repeated himself. "And rumble is in your chest, it's like-"

"Ugh, that's _so_ interesting," Sulley murmured, shifting so that his arm brushed Mike's. Mike jumped a little. "Hey," Sulley continued. "You want pizza? I want pizza."

"What." Mike blinked at Sulley. "No. No, I don't want pizza. And neither do you. It's-" he glanced at his alarm clock- "11:30 PM."

"Yeah…" Sulley casually leaned back on his elbows. "Thirsty?" he said at length.

"Not particularly." Mike scribbled some notes in his notebook.

"You sure? 'Cause we could hit a bar…"

Mike snorted. "I'm going to assume this means your attention span is thoroughly shot. Shall we call it a night?"

"Okay." Sulley nodded slowly. "Okay, or. Or we could hang out a while."

"Hang out? With me?" Mike asked incredulously.

Sulley shrugged. "Ah, yeah?"

"And do what exactly?"

Sulley turned his smooth smile on him. "So suspicious." His smile waned thoughtfully. "Why do you want to be a scarer?"

Mike's features flickered through a lot of expressions, finally settling on determined. "It's my dream. It's just who I am." He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, which Sulley watched intently. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know," Sulley said distantly, eyes still on Mike's mouth. "It was stupid."

"I wouldn't say… stupid…"

Mike automatically shrank away when Sulley leaned in. "Sullivan." His voice was a warning. "Tell me you're not."

"Chill," said Sulley quietly, bringing up a warm, rough palm to cup the back of Mike's neck. "Goddamn, you're so small."

"Shut up," Mike hissed. "You weren't listening to a word I said."

"I was listening," Sulley insisted. He dipped his head so that their noses brushed and Mike shivered. "Relax. It's no big deal."

"I thought you were into girls," Mike said helplessly.

"I never told you that."

"You flirt with them all the time."

"I'm just very friendly." Sulley flashed his teeth, breathing Mike's breath.

"Obviously."

"Come on Wazowski, you're into me," Sulley stated.

Mike opened his mouth, but his response was smothered by Sulley's damnably soft lips. All Mike's internal organs melted and pooled in his abdomen. It was too sudden and too new. He broke the kiss, scowling as he saw that Sulley looked utterly pleased with himself.

"I've wanted to do that ever since you rubbed my nose in that first A+. You're such a know-it-all bastard."

"You're a lazy, cocky asshole." Mike found himself smiling as he watched Sulley laugh.

"But I'm still really hot, right?"

Mike looked back into Sulley's grey-blue eyes. He was gorgeous. Everyone on campus knew that. He was fun, too. Mike knew that. Sometimes he got tired of denying it.

"Sullivan…"

"Call me Sulley."

"Um. Sulley. Okay. I'm not really so good at, um…"

Sulley kissed him again, and it was like sinking slowly into a hot tub, and the slight upturn of Sulley's lips was suddenly comforting. Mike's shoulders finally lost their rigid tension. He brought his hand up to brush the backs of his fingers with Sulley's stubbly jaw and Mike found that, by some magic, his warring emotions were quieted, even as his heart pounded in his chest. His hands came to rest gingerly on Sulley's shoulders and he did his best to kiss back. Perhaps this was a small victory for Sulley, and Mike could live with that, for a little while. Sulley was warm, languorous indulgence, cradling the back of Mike's head and pressing close, with text books lying open and forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2014 and decided to import it. What a weird kid I was.
> 
> Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6M


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